Personal aircraft have been proposed and developed. To gain widespread use among non-pilots, a personal aircraft that is at least largely autonomous may be desired. Such an aircraft may be used to provide a recreational experience or as a mode of transportation, e.g., as a replacement for an automobile or other terrestrial mode of transportation.
An autonomous aircraft may be controlled by a flight computer configured to receive start, destination, waypoint, and/or other route information, and to use such information to generate a series of control commands to operate the aircraft's propulsion elements (e.g., vertical lift fans, forward flight propellers, etc.) and control surfaces (e.g., ailerons, elevators, flaps, rudders, etc.), sometimes referred to herein collectively as “actuators”, to cause the aircraft to take off, fly to the destination (e.g., via the indicated waypoints), and land, all without human intervention.
For a non-pilot, flying in a small, personal aircraft may be an anxiety provoking experience. In the case of autonomous flight, a passenger may become concerned that the aircraft's autonomous flight control system may fail to navigate around obstacles, respond to an apparent change in conditions (e.g., weather), etc. A passenger may experience anxiety due to the absence of hand or other human-operated controls in an autonomous aircraft.